Go or Stay?
This last Thursday morning, Kim and I, along with most of our family, attended our daughter Annie’s graduation from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. It was an emotional time for Mom and Dad to watch our last child walk across the stage to receive her diploma. We felt the joy of her four-year achievement mixed with the tears of seeing her ready to begin a new season of life as a young adult and face the rough and tough world where she wants to make a difference. And then, the president of GCU, Brian Mueller stepped up to the podium and challenged all the freshly-minted graduates to do what God has called us all to do: “Go” and not “stay.” His words not only inspired the graduates, but they motivated me as a parent, grandparent, and disciple of Jesus Christ.
Here’s an excerpt of what he said.
“My two 11-year-old grandsons told me the other day that I'm very easy to please and I asked ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘Every time you hear let's go Lopes you get excited.’ And I thought about that for a second and realized I have probably heard that literally thousands of times in my last 16 years at GCU…let's go Lopes. But I get excited about that middle word ‘go’ and I did a little research and discovered that word ‘go’ is used 1554 times in the Bible and the word ‘stay’ is used 54 times in the Bible. And God has used this word in big times:
He told Abraham to ‘go’ to a new land and I will make you a great nation.
He told Moses to ‘go’ to Pharaoh and tell him that enough is enough and you are going to let My people go. And Moses didn’t want to go, but God said go and he went.
He told Jonah to ‘go’ to Ninevah, yet Jonah didn’t want to go, but God made him go and something great happened.
He told David, the youngest and smallest in the family to ‘go’ and he went and took on the Philistine giant Goliath
He told His Son Jesus to leave the comforts of heaven to come to earth and put on flesh and grow up to suffer and die on the cross for our sins and rise again in three days and Jesus obeyed.
At the end of Jesus’ ministry on earth, Jesus gathered His disciples and here is what Matthew 28:16–20 says: ‘But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. 17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'
There will be 31,000 Lopes graduate and go out into the world this year and my message to you is whether you are a nurse going into a hospital or a teacher going into a school or an engineer going into a Taiwanese chip factory or whether you are a business entrepreneur or accountant or a marketer… if you will go and in going you will do you your best to serve God and his kingdom and you will do your best to serve His people by putting the needs of others in front of your own you will absolutely be an unqualified success. Moses was nervous, Jonah was nervous, David was nervous, but they went. The disciples were nervous but they went. If you just keep in mind that the world's success is not yours and if you will do your best to bring your talents to serve God in His kingdom and to serve others, you're going to be an unqualified success.”
It was an inspirational speech not just for the graduates, but for all of us as disciples of Jesus Christ who are called to "go" for Him, to "go" with His gospel and to "go" into the world of desperate sinners who do not know why they exist or what they truly need. It is not a time to sit around and allow the trivialities of life to consume our time and attention, but to remain laser focused on our mission “to glorify God by making more and better disciples of Jesus Christ.”
It is “go” time.
Pastor Jeff
“No man would find it difficult to die who died every day. He would have practiced it so often, that he would only have to die but once more.”